The dead horse twitches

 John Scalzi reports his annual blog readership numbers:

In a more general sense, 2020 has been a pretty decent year for visitorship to Whatever. Indeed, for the first time in several years, the site gained on-site readership, which is an encouraging thing. The site’s high water mark for direct visits was 2012, and since then the on-site readership has declined precipitously, following the general trend for blogs in the social media era, down to about a third of that traffic in 2019. This decline in direct views been compensated for somewhat over the years by readership through RSS, email and WordPress’ own newsfeed feature, and I can drive traffic to the site via Twitter for particular pieces. That said, there’s no arguing that there’s been a downward trend on the site from eight years ago.

2020 saw the first uptick in on-site visits in years, to about 3 million visits; in fact, 2020 posted better on-site viewership than either 2019 or 2018. Which, again: Encouraging! I don’t want to overstate the bump — on-site traffic is only barely above 2018 levels, and well behind 2017.

Why yes, as is our annual New Year’s custom, we will most certainly beat this dead horse! It’s a tradition anticipated by longtime readers every year. But you’ll have to wait three days for the final numbers to come in. I’ll send a free ebook edition of Corrosion by Johan Kalsi to whoever’s estimate in this post’s comments comes closest to the number of Google pageviews for the blog in 2020.

For all my undisguised contempt for the mediocrity that is Scalzi, the one thing I will say for him is that more writers should be willing to report their numbers, for good or for ill, the way that he has since he stopped trying to exaggerate his traffic to the media. Doing so helps others put their own efforts and ambitions in context.

Don’t talk to the media, part 46,567

No matter how smart you are, no matter how nice and sympathetic the reporter seems, no matter how interesting your side of the story is, never forget that the deck is completely stacked against you, as a friend of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanagh was reminded in 2018:

This kind of appreciation for the skill of your enemy is essential to dealing with atheist materialists, whether in the old Soviet Union or in the modern media. Sure, the press is filled with people who are incompetent and make unbelievable mistakes. You and I might consider the MSM something of a joke. But don’t be fooled. In the midst of the mediocrities, you’ll also find experts and fanatics. You’ll meet people schooled in opposition research, psychological warfare and emotional manipulation.

You don’t have to like these facts. (In fact, you shouldn’t.) But you must respect reality. The reporter who has just called you with a list of personal questions might be a goofball — or a trained and skilled interrogator. Assume, to be on the safe side, that he is very likely a deeply damaged, ideologically obsessed and angry human being. One who cares nothing about you, fairness, or even your life. Just like the Russians who tortured Fr. Ciszek.

The Story Was Written Before They Even Contacted You

Every person who comes into the media’s crosshairs should understand this. Nothing you say or do is going to change the story they are going to write. Indeed, the story was written before they even contacted you. They will falsify quotes and leave out facts. They often have reams of opposition research (ugly tales about you) at the ready. If so, they will slowly dole it out to set up and trick a naïve subject.

To echo Fr. Ciszek: They are relentless, they are thorough, and they are good at their trade. Acknowledging this and not expecting fair or decent treatment will leave you more prepared than most. To become hysterical, or to even talk to them, is to play into their hands. Treat them the way surfers treat sharks — as a deadly adversary that should never be underestimated. I have been a reporter for some many years myself, and I have done a lot of reading on communism from The Gulag Archipelago to China’s Cultural Revolution. So after I hung up with Farrow, I knew exactly what was happening. I had been set up, and it had been a long time in the making. 

That’s the key to truly comprehending why you cannot talk to the media. Never talk to the media. The story is already written. Even those who are ex-media experts, such as Pax Dickenson and me, only talk to the media in very rare and particular circumstances when we know we can undermine the pre-written story. But most people haven’t worked in media for over a decade – remember, I was on the board of a television station in addition to having 19 years of experience as a local columnist (St. Paul Pioneer Press, Atlanta Journal/Constitution), as a nationally syndicated columnist (Chronicle Features, Universal Press Syndicate), and as a magazine contributor (Computer Gaming World, Electronic Entertainment) – and therefore have no idea what the pre-written story is or how it can be, in certain circumstances, undermined.

UPDATE: To be clear, Do Not Talk To The Media also means Do Not Respond To Media Requests. Don’t politely decline. Don’t obscenely decline. Don’t write a wall of text explaining your Very Important Personal Media Policy. Ignore it and delete the email, because they can and will attempt to use anything you send them. Just ask Milo….

Gamergating Arizona

 The Donald and the Arizona Republican Party calls for Team Trump to pour it on the corrupt Maricopa County officials:

The Maricopa Board of Supervisors are pleading to make the phone calls stop. They have had to put more staff on the phones to keep the lines up and operating. Hopefully they figure out soon that an audit is all the voters want. Do that small thing, the phone calls will end quick!

Maricopa Board of Supervisors: 602-506-3415.

Shut up and email because the ride never ends.

More votes than voters

Breaking News: In Pennsylvania there were 205,000 more votes than there were voters. This alone flips the state to President Trump.

– Donald J. Trump

Election officials have certified Joe Biden as the winner of the U.S. Presidential election

I wouldn’t want to be one of those election officials right now. Because it sure doesn’t sound like a man on the verge of conceding anything.

UPDATE: the actual numbers reported.

6,962,607: total ballots counted

6,760,230: total voters

Stay healthy, take Vitamin D

Especially if you happen to be worried about Covid-19 or Covid-19+:

Stop waiting for a miracle drug: A Boston University doctor says a sufficient amount of vitamin D can cut the risk of catching coronavirus by 54{e61d147451bc60549e96d95b5c07be35845e0345eab7ed5d54cc3d49f812ab5c}.

“People have been looking for the magic drug or waiting for the vaccine and not looking for something this simple,” said Dr. Michael Holick, professor of medicine, physiology and biophysics at Boston University School of Medicine.

Holick and his colleagues studied blood samples from Quest Diagnostics of more than 190,000 Americans from all 50 states and found that those who had deficient levels of vitamin D had 54{e61d147451bc60549e96d95b5c07be35845e0345eab7ed5d54cc3d49f812ab5c} higher COVID positivity compared to those with adequate levels of vitamin D in the blood.

The risk of getting coronavirus continued to decline as vitamin D levels increased, the study, published in the Public Library of Science One peer-reviewed journal shows.

“The higher your vitamin D status, lower was your risk,” Holick said.

I upgraded from my daily Vitamin C regime to one that included D, Zinc, and D+K2 about a year ago. Forget Covid. I haven’t even had a cold since.

Destiny confronts Mike Pence

Neon Revolt addresses Vice-President Pence’s decision on January 6, 2021:

For the past four years, President Trump has been the most powerful man on earth.

For one day, on January 6th, you, Vice President Pence, will be the most powerful man on earth.

On that day, you and you alone will have the power to set not just America, but all of humanity free – or you will have the power to sentence us all to slavery.

Which side are you on, Mr. Vice President? The side of truth? The side of the people? Or the side of lies, and all those from which they emanate?

I do not envy your position, sir. This is not how I ever wanted this moment in history to ever play out, and I would give just about anything to have it go any other way.

But it seems to me that you have a rendezvous with destiny, Mr. Vice President. On that fateful day, Mr. Vice President, I expect you to rise to the occasion, and I suggest you start by throwing out the entire fraudulent tally from the Chicom-colony of California, and their 55 electoral votes.

And then you can work your way down the line, tossing out every other fraudulent state tally until the liars and thieves are all vanquished and wailing and deposed, and the rightful leader of this nation, who won without fraud or thievery and who wants the best for her citizens, sits for another 4 years.

You have a choice, Mr. Vice President. Either you will rise up with courage and become the hero who saved the Republic, or you will spend the rest of your days reviled in ignominy as your children, and your grandchildren, and their descendants end up as little more than chattel on the global plantation.

I don’t think I’m exaggerating the stakes. Go with God, Mr. Vice President. Fight for the people on that day. Strike the giants, and cut off all their heads. If you can be entrusted with this immense and Constitutional power – to safeguard the Republic on that day when our enemies would snatch it away from us – we, the people, will know beyond a shadow of a doubt that we can trust you in 2024 and beyond.

Steel yourself, Mr. Vice President.

Greatness awaits.

These are the times that try men’s characters. These are the times when men are forced to declare, in public, whom they serve. I very much doubt that President Trump’s next term depends upon the actions of the Vice-President, but certainly the future political viability of Mike Pence does.

From a game theory perspective, the decision is a no-brainer. Pence should throw out the electors from the fraudulent states and secure President Trump’s victory. But the tentacles of the Deep State are insidious, and no few of its foolish servitors have already betrayed the President.

I make no predictions of what a single man will choose to do. But it is very clear what a loyal man, a logical man, or even a self-serving man, should do.

Why the President signed the spending bill

President Trump explains, in his own words:

As President of the United States it is my responsibility to protect the people of our country from the economic devastation and hardship that was caused by the China Virus.

I understand that many small businesses have been forced to close as a result of harsh actions by Democrat-run states. Many people are back to work, but my job is not done until everyone is back to work.

Fortunately, as a result of my work with Congress in passing the CARES Act earlier this year, we avoided another Great Depression. Under my leadership, Project Warp Speed has been a tremendous success, my Administration and I developed a vaccine many years ahead of wildest expectations, and we are distributing these vaccines, and others soon coming, to millions of people.

As President, I have told Congress that I want far less wasteful spending and more money going to the American people in the form of $2,000 checks per adult and $600 per child.

As President I am demanding many rescissions under the Impoundment Control Act of 1974. The Act provides that, “whenever the President determines that all or part of any budget authority will not be required to carry out the full objectives or scope of programs for which it is provided, or that such budget authority should be rescinded for fiscal policy or other reasons (including termination of authorized projects or activities for which budget authority has been provided), the President shall transmit to both Houses of Congress a special message” describing the amount to be reserved, the relevant accounts, the reasons for the rescission, and the economic effects of the rescission. 2 U.S.C. § 683.

I will sign the Omnibus and Covid package with a strong message that makes clear to Congress that wasteful items need to be removed. I will send back to Congress a redlined version, item by item, accompanied by the formal rescission request to Congress insisting that those funds be removed from the bill.

I am signing this bill to restore unemployment benefits, stop evictions, provide rental assistance, add money for PPP, return our airline workers back to work, add substantially more money for vaccine distribution, and much more.

On Monday the House will vote to increase payments to individuals from $600 to $2,000. Therefore, a family of four would receive $5,200. Additionally, Congress has promised that Section 230, which so unfairly benefits Big Tech at the expense of the American people, will be reviewed and either be terminated or substantially reformed.

Likewise, the House and Senate have agreed to focus strongly on the very substantial voter fraud which took place in the November 3 Presidential election.

The Senate will start the process for a vote that increases checks to $2,000, repeals Section 230, and starts an investigation into voter fraud.

Big Tech must not get protections of Section 230!

Voter Fraud must be fixed!

Much more money is coming. I will never give up my fight for the American people!

It’s fair to observe that the President will still have to follow through on the recissions, but it looks as if the Impoundment Control Act will permit him to essentially line-item veto the various provisions that the American people found so offensive. In other words, the jury is still out.

And notice that this is not a move that makes sense for a President who does not expect to be in office after January 20, 2021. Regardless, as always, wait 48 hours before you attempt to judge his actions. And remember, Congress already had the votes to override a presidential veto. Perhaps the recissions will prove to be meaningless, but we already know that the veto would have been nothing but a symbolic gesture.

Mike Cernovich disagrees:

Tonight was the end of any remaining hopes – delusional or otherwise – that Trump would remain in office for a second term. 

He capitulated totally, a pathetic act of weakness leaving a stain on his presidency. 

Entered a lion, left a lamb. Mitch’s and Pelosi’s favorite mutton.

I’ve always had more confidence in the God-Emperor than Cerno. We shall see who is more correct in the coming four weeks.

Americans discover the uniparty

From Twitter: The greatest trick the political establishment ever played on the American people was convincing us that there are two parties, each with diametrically opposing viewpoints.

I’m not sure I’d even place it in the top ten, myself. Nevertheless, it is good to see that in the bipartisan opposition to President Trump, the average American is now beginning to recognize what was generally regarded as a strange and radical position back in 2004. And you may find the bolded sentence to be interesting in light of current events.

Remember

A failure to remember the lessons of the past is the great weakness of the voting populace and is exploited by the bifactional ruling party every four years. The present election is always the election at which everything is uniquely at stake; the idea that the global jihad was the deadliest threat to ever face America would have been rightly laughed at by those voters worried about an aggressive Soviet Union in 1980. The hysterical Three Monkeys who now warn of the lethal dangers of a Kerry presidency – as if the nation didn’t already recently survive two terms of a soulless ambition seeker with an annoyingly leftist wife – forget how they swore up and down that keeping Gore out of office was the most important vote anyone would ever make.

On the other side of the false divide, the Little Red Book Democrats spit foam-flecked drivel in comparing George Delano unfavorably to Hitler, Caligula and Genghis Khan, somehow managing to skip over the fact that this Republican president has done them the service of expanding the central government further and faster than Kennedy, Carter or Clinton. Like the Three Monkeys, the Little Red Books are mesmerized by the initial in parentheses before the name. Everything in the Party, nothing outside the Party, nothing against the Party.

But the bipolar construct is an old one. It has been a mirage since the elections of 1900, when JP Morgan and John D. Rockefeller were selecting the candidates for both parties. You may seriously believe that it makes a vital difference to the nation whether George Bush or John Kerry are elected president; it does not.

Both Bush and Kerry will severely disappoint their supporters because the president is not a dictator. He is primarily a symbol, and a largely powerless one at that. Only a candidate completely devoted to dismantling the federal leviathan can hope to wield any real power and that is mostly negative. A president can shut down the government, either by executive order or recalcitrance vis-a-vis Congress, but that is precisely the opposite of what both George Bush and John Kerry plan to do.

There is no party of small government in Washington DC. A vote for either candidate of the major party is a vote for big government now and bigger government in the future. If that suits you, then by all means vote for one of them. If not, it’s far better that you vote for no one at all than betray your principles based on rationalizations of lesser evils and secret plans.

Why I am confident

/pol/ wants to know why I’m confident that Trump, and not Biden or Harris, will be the President of the United States for the next four years.

I‘ve pretty much accepted that Trump is not going to be President in 2021. Why is Vox 100{e61d147451bc60549e96d95b5c07be35845e0345eab7ed5d54cc3d49f812ab5c} certain that Trump is going to cross the Rubicon? I respect Vox but I just don’t see it. What does he know /pol?

This guy gets it.

Basically, Trump’s EO shows he knew the voter fraud was coming, and he was getting ready to catch it. If you can accept he knew it was coming, and had Mil Intel at his disposal, it is very unlikely you aren’t looking at Trump’s plan.

People today have no idea how surveillance tech has advanced, because it has all been blacked out from back when you needed to get in a room to bug it if you wanted to listen. Now, they are listening to people breath in another building, without ever going near it.

With that kind of intel, and knowing what was coming, it is unlikely Trump will lose. Plus, given he was thinking about it, my bet would be he viewed it as a problem which needed a shocking, long-term solution. It was not just a speed bump he had to get over. Remember Trump has to live in the US after his Presidency. If he left the vote fraud in place, and Cabal just took over after he left, he and his family would get Kennedy’d fast as a message to others.

If you look at the whole thing, the only way all the pieces fit together is Trump was ready for this, and he will end up in office. 

Moreover, the God-Emperor Donald I is not acting like a man who believes he lost. Nor is Creepy Joe acting like a man who believes he won. And the media’s behavior, to say nothing of the behavior of the corrupt Republicans, is entirely consistent with the Trump Wins scenario. At the end of the day, you are faced with two choices. One is what President Trump has been consistently telling you. The other is what the mainstream media has been incessantly shrieking at you. And the one thing we know, beyond any shadow of a doubt, is that the only scenario we can be absolutely certain is false is the one that the mainstream media is pushing, because the Official Story is never true.

Now, the mere existence of a plan does not mean that it will be successful. The enemy always gets a vote and no plan, no matter how well gamed-out it is, can be reasonably expected to perfectly anticipate all of the enemy’s moves. But the elements of the plan that have been exposed to our view to date do not indicate an inept or mediocre planner whose efforts are likely to fail behind it. To the contrary, they show signs of a strategic mind that may even rival some of history’s greats. 

There are clear and unmistakable indications of a great political double-envelopment in action. It may or it may not succeed; Hannibal could have failed at Cannae if the Roman infantry had been able to break the Carthaginian center after the massive trap was sprung upon them. Or one of his subordinate commanders could have lost his nerve and failed to give the necessary orders to close the trap at the right time. But at this point, it is hard to imagine any of the primary players losing their nerve when the plan is playing out, the traps have all been laid, the enemy has dutifully entered them en masse, and the end game is in sight.

At the end of the day, it’s just pattern recognition. Because no matter how confusing or inexplicable the various pieces of the puzzle may appear to be, they are neither random nor are they unrelated. They all – well, those that are real, anyhow – they all have to fit together somehow. Here is one pattern that looks familiar in the current context.

The appearance of erudition

Everything is fake, including the supposed knowledge of the politicians and famous public intellectuals:

In a place like Washington—small, interconnected, erudite, gossipy—being well-read can create certain advantages. So, too, can seeming well-read. The “Washington bookshelf” is almost a phenomenon in itself, whether in a hotel library, at a think tank office or on the walls behind the cocktail bar at a Georgetown house.

And, as with nearly any other demand of busy people and organizations, it can be conjured up wholesale, for a fee.

Books by the Foot, a service run by the Maryland-based bookseller Wonder Book, has become a go-to curator of Washington bookshelves, offering precisely what its name sounds like it does. As retro as a shelf of books might seem in an era of flat-panel screens, Books by the Foot has thrived through Democratic and Republican administrations, including that of the book-averse Donald Trump. And this year, the company has seen a twist: When the coronavirus pandemic arrived, Books by the Foot had to adapt to a downturn in office- and hotel-decor business—and an uptick in home-office Zoom backdrops for the talking-head class.

The Wonder Book staff doesn’t pry too much into which objective a particular client is after. If an order were to come in for, say, 12 feet of books about politics, specifically with a progressive or liberal tilt—as one did in August—Wonder Book’s manager, Jessica Bowman, would simply send one of her more politics-savvy staffers to the enormous box labeled “Politically Incorrect” (the name of Books by the Foot’s politics package) to select about 120 books by authors like Hillary Clinton, Bill Maher, Al Franken and Bob Woodward. The books would then be “staged,” or arranged with the same care a florist might extend to a bouquet of flowers, on a library cart; double-checked by a second staffer; and then shipped off to the residence or commercial space where they would eventually be shelved and displayed (or shelved and taken down to read).

Only sometimes do Bowman and Wonder Book President Chuck Roberts know the real identity of the person whose home or project they’ve outfitted: “When we work with certain designers, I pretty much already know it’s going to be either an A-list movie or an A-list client. They always order under some code name,” Bowman says. “They’re very secretive.”

I think people have a basic understanding that there is an element of falsehood to many, if not most displayed libraries, given the reaction that more than a view Darkstream viewers have had to my videos. I’ve even been accused of using a greenscreen with a backdrop of a picture of a library. This is why it gives me great pleasure to be able to answer those who ask “have you read all those books” with “actually, I’ve published quite a few of them.”

And even more pleasure to inform the more dedicated doubters that I wrote more than a dozen of them. The Castalia-only portion of the library already fills more than three double shelves and I haven’t even received my copy of the first three Junior Classics yet.

My office library is larger than it appears on screen, as there are seven horizontal rows and six columns in an L-shape to my left and behind my gaming table. There are about 600 books and 50 boxed wargames in it (not counting comics), but my office library is only a small portion of the house library which is scattered throughout shelves in various rooms and hallways on all three floors of the house. Forget books, I don’t even know how many bookshelves we have.

But it is intriguing, and informative, to have the shallowness and lack of knowledge that we have observed on the part of the ruling class confirmed by their need to buy the appearance of erudition in addition to their worthless university degrees.